An Uncertain New Chapter in Sinaloa, Home State of ‘El Chapo’

Officers kept watch outside the house where the Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo, was captured in Los Mochis, Mexico on Friday.Credit
Edgard Garrido/Reuters

LOS MOCHIS, Mexico — The capture of the drug lord Joaquín Guzmán Loera stunned the world and earned President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico a much-needed round of applause. Yet here in the narcotics kingpin’s home state, Sinaloa, the news landed with a thud.

To many residents in this Pacific city of low colorful buildings and clean streets, where Mr. Guzmán was captured by Mexican marines on Friday morning, he was and remains El Señor (the Lord), a near-mythical figure who inspires as much respect as fear.

“He is good and intelligent,” said Ismael Pimental, a fruit vendor in Los Mochis. “He treats the people he does business with the right way.”

From the outside, many see Mr. Guzmán and his organization as a network of criminals who flout the law and corrupt its institutions, but the local view is quite the opposite: The Guzmán cartel actually keeps order, often more efficiently than the government, and is even more adept at helping deliver basic services.

OKLA.

ARIZ.

N.M.

TEXAS

Los Mochis

MEXICO

Gulf of

Mexico

SINALOA

Pacific

Ocean

Mexico City

Altiplano

prison

400 miles

JAN. 10, 2016

By The New York Times

“If you leave your car open, no one takes it; a cellphone on a table, the same happens,” Mr. Pimental continued. Thieves, he said, get beaten for a first offense. Punishment for a second offense is far harsher by the cartel than it would be by the police.

“We were perfectly comfortable when El Chapo was here,” said a 16-year-old named Elvira at a coffee shop. “Now we are worried someone else is going to come here and try to fill his spot.”

Aside from questions over who aspires to be the new El Señor, there are concerns about disruptions in the ranks of the Sinaloa cartel.

Martha López, whose house is just yards away from the one that was the scene of the gunfight that led to Mr. Guzmán’s capture, said, “Now that El Chapo has been captured, I am worried that all those young men that were employed by him are going to be left hanging jobless.”

The moral ambiguity of siding with narcotics criminals, or feeling empathy for them, is not lost on the residents of Los Mochis.

“With all the corruption, I don’t know good from wrong anymore,” Mrs. López said.

The Sinaloa cartel has, over time, become a shadow state — building houses, schools and hospitals in impoverished communities. Mr. Pimental, the fruit vendor, said people often called the cartel when they had plumbing or electrical problems, rather than relying on a state bureaucracy that is often ineffective.

Homicides and kidnappings have declined sharply, something the state government points to with pride, but many here in Los Mochis, a city known for its spicy tacos and for producing many champion prizefighters, credit the cartel with bringing stability.

The neighborhood that became Mr. Guzmán’s last hide-out is a middle- to upper-middle-class area, a relatively safe enclave. The state’s secretary of interior lives in the neighborhood, as does the governor’s mother. All the same, residents recounted with a mix of fear and amazement the morning that their streets suddenly became the setting of a huge raid.

It was still dark outside when Mrs. López was awakened at 4:30 a.m., the military helicopters flying overhead making her windows vibrate.

Photo

Five men were killed in the raid. Few were surprised that Mr. Guzmán returned home after fleeing Altiplano prison last year.Credit
Hector Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

A walking tour of the neighborhood, known as Las Palmas and Scali, offered its own narrative. As the marines descended on the house where Mr. Guzmán was staying, a gun battle broke out. Mr. Guzmán and his top lieutenant slipped away through a storm drain, the authorities have said.

They emerged a little more than half a mile away, and journalists who later examined the storm drain found an automatic rifle covered in dirt.

From there, Mr. Guzmán and the other man stole a car from a passing motorist. Yet this time there was no spectacular escape. The car’s owner alerted the police, and the federal authorities spotted the vehicle on the outskirts of the city, where the two fleeing men were captured.

Yet doubt is never far from the mind of Mexicans when it comes to the official version of a story, especially one such as this.

For instance, though five men were said to have been killed in the gun battle at the house, there was little physical evidence of gunshots on the outside walls. Officials have not offered explanations. Other people in the house were taken into custody; others may have fled.

In Los Mochis on Saturday, life seemed to have snapped back to normal. No one seemed to feel the slightest alarm. Few expressed surprise that after breaking out prison, Mr. Guzmán had decided to come home.

“They always come back to their homeland, where they feel safe,” said Juan Carlos Pacheco, a professor at Universidad de Durango who lives in Sinaloa. “Sinaloa is that way. Fighting the government, politics, is part of our essence.”

Local and federal officials saw it a different way. Most were busy patting one another on the back for a job well done. And what in other countries might count as a failure of security institutions was a point of pride in Sinaloa.

The state governor, Mario López, suggested that Mr. Guzmán’s being caught there twice brought credit to Sinaloa.

“It means this place has never been a safe haven to him and that all families can now enjoy the tranquillity and peace they deserve,” he said in an interview.

A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2016, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Uncertain Time for Residents of El Chapo’s Home State . Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe